You’d be up for child cruelty today if they heard you let the wee ones lick the bowl in which the cake ingredients were mixed! 

There was a dogfight every time in our house for the opportunity.  I’m trying to remember the taste…  easy when it contained rich seasoning, ginger or dried fruit.. whatever, we loved it and fought over it.  It took mum to brandish the wooden spoon before peace could be restored.  We must have felt that wooden spoon in anger more than once, for no lion-tamer’s whip could have been more effective in restraining us!

It had to be wielded too to keep us off the cooling confections.  Mum determined a minimum time before the new cake of bread could be cut.  We paced like convicts in anticipation.

I remember when first my brother took his fiancée – now wife – home and mum entered with a plate of newly cut and buttered wheaten, soda and treacle bread.  ‘Stretch or starve’s the rule, here!’ she announced, indicating that the plate would not be offered first or preferentially, to the guest.  The strange girl was knocked down and swept aside in the rush.  When she timidly returned to the plate, it was empty.  Another of life’s lessons learned.

Have we thrown out the baby with the bathwater? 

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